Melbourne a bit longer...

Melbourne Travel Blog

As I was getting the tram into central Melb most days I decided to re-locate - to a hostel above an Irish bar in Chinatown; not a bad little place as it happens.

A four bed dorm cost the same as an eight bed, so I went for the smaller. For the first two days my only room-mate was a Chinese girl, Cameltoe, who spent most of the time walking around in figure hugging pyjama shorts and a Cookie monster top.

She seemed nice enough, though as she couldn’t speak English and my Chinese isn’t exactly that good (or indeed existent at all) so we would generally just nod or smile at each other periodically.

I managed to catch a pre-season AFL game with Pulse and his better half. Almost all AFL teams are from around Melbourne (Sydney’s team was relocated from here), but the team we were supporting was actually called Melbourne.

Scary alleyway

They lost 3042 to 2017 - you get quite a few goals in an AFL match…

The next day was a trip to St Kilda beach. Me and Pulse got ice-creams and had a quick look at all the pasty (presumably Irish/English) sun-bathers. Then we had a few pints.

On Saturday I was left to my own devices; a quick check of face book and I found that I guy I’d met in both La Paz and Cusco, Substance McBeerster had coincidentally arrived in Melbourne that day.

We had a few drinks in ‘my’ pub and then on to a mysterious cocktail bar, the Croft Institute. To get there you need to wander down graffiti-ed winding back alleys for about 200m, the only other doorways being the back doors of Chinese restaurants.

ooooooh

Once in the bar it is full of medical paraphernalia and kind of looks like an old asylum that happens to sell cocktails.

At some stage Substance picked up a travelling Aussie businesswoman and also managed to get a lot drunker than me. We then all headed to a funk club. Subs was well on the way by now and was leap-frogging around the dance floor and pointy-dancing at people, in between attempting to feel-up the business-woman.

At some stage the business-woman got a little bit disturbed and left which prompted Substance to have a go at me for ruining his night before he pointy-danced off down the street. Turns out he later got a 400 dollar fine for being drunk outside a pub.

Top times.

Sunday was a much more classy affair. Well, it started that way but ended up erm, not so much.

Real Australians

I went to Hanging Rock ‘picnic’ with Pulse and the gang. The picnic was a bit of music, but mainly wine-tasting and food stalls, on the whole olive or barbeque-based.

We did a circuit of the wines, like most people we were feigning some sort of interest in the wines rather than just demanding a free sample…

“Oh, the 1996 Reisling… I wonder how that compares to the 1998?” *Glass filled* “Mmm, hmmm…yes. That’s quite fruity actually” And wander off to the next stall…

After a while the constant web of deceit got too much so we just bought some wine. And a buffalo-sausage hot-dog. And strawberry beer. And a pie.

After the festival I joined Pulse for a couple more pints in a local pub. The mix of pie, sausage and alcohol prompted a toilet rush.

Seriously, why on earth would you keep the loo roll up there...?

Unfortunately I didn’t look before I leapt and found myself in a sticky situation: No paper in the dispenser and nothing even slightly paper-like in my pockets.

Long story short, as I left the bathroom sans socks I looked up and saw a toilet roll balanced on top of the cubicle - whyyyy?!!??..

Monday was entirely beer free. I had a quick look around the art gallery and then took the free tour bus around Melbourne. For a lot of the journey there was an automated tour announcement, but there were periods of silence.

It turned out that the bus driver was the kind of person who is nervous of silences, so whenever the commentary stopped he would fill in himself with mundanities:

“So… you’ll see we’re making a right turn here. It goes over the tram tracks so we will wait for a minute or so. Now of course in the suburbs you wouldn’t have a bus route that right turns over tracks… it’s just not done. But here in the centre there are a few places where the old right-turn is permitted. Here is one of them - I won’t be able to tell you about the next one as the automated announcement will be playing, but it’ll be in about five minutes or so…”